The cure to what’s ailing NASCAR: A hipster revolution? – Yahoo Sports

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — A couple years back Dale Earnhardt Jr. went to Terminal West, an old foundry turned mid-sized concert venue in Atlanta, to see a band that had caught his attention. Lord Huron had popped up on his Twenty One Pilots Pandora station and Junior was hooked by the Los Angeles-based indie folk music.

Earnhardt had met someone close to the band, so after the show he was ushered backstage to meet the musicians.

“Swell guy,” front man Ben Schneider told Yahoo Sports via email. “Though we don’t know much about NASCAR.”

To Earnhardt, this was perfect. He’s lived his life in a spotlight, fawned over by everyone from common fans to massive celebrities. If this had been a country concert, he would have been hauled up on stage to cheering fans. Here, among the hipsters watching a rising band, no one recognized him. He was nobody.

“Just another guy back stage,” Earnhardt said with a laugh. “They couldn’t care less about racing. I don’t want them to. It’s fun for me to be a fan. I want to be a fan. It’s more enjoyment for me that they don’t know anything about it, don’t know anything about racing.”

For Earnhardt there is a bigger message to the story. NASCAR is again in transition and as Sunday’s season-opening Daytona 500 approaches, discussion has centered around sagging attendance, television ratings and an aging of recognizable stars.

Earnhardt, 42, is one of them. Reigning champion Jimmie Johnson is 41. Kevin Harvick is 41. Matt Kenseth is 44. Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart and Carl Edwards all retired over the past year.

There is a school of thought that when those guys go, the fans go, an inescapable spiral of decreasing popularity and relevance. New, and younger, drivers will win (someone has to win) but it won’t be the same.

Earnhardt sees it differently and he points to hanging out at Lord Huron concerts as a small, but telling, bit of proof that everyone should relax. The combination of a new generation of drivers and their ability to convey their unexpected personalities and interests via social media could push NASCAR toward a boom time, as more people realize that this isn’t the homogenous, Southern-only, country-croonin’ sport they think it is.

“It ain’t that way any more,” Earnhardt said.

Many consider Junior the poster boy for old-school NASCAR. He’s actually not. He’s far more of a hipster than good old boy. His music taste? There’s Lord Huron, of course, and The Dangerous Summer, a rock band so obscure they broke up in 2014. Then there’s Matthew Good, a Canadian rocker, and Twenty One Pilots, semi-Emo rock band. While he says he’ll listen to any good song, from Taylor Swift to Barry Manilow, one genre is noticeably absent: country music.

“I grew up on country,” Earnhardt said. “I love ’70s country. My favorite song of all time is ‘Rose Colored Glasses’ by John Conlee. But I just love music and I love learning new things. Man, when you find a band, like when I found Dangerous Summer, I found them late. They were already busted up when I found them. But when you find them and they have six, seven, eight songs you like, it’s really cool.”

So here is the tenet of Earnhardt’s faith. If he isn’t everything that people think he is, and he actually has broader interests and potential appeal, and if he, in his 40s and in his 18th season in NASCAR, with the most famous name in the sport, can have so much in common with some Brooklyn millennial, then imagine what all the new, young guys are like? And, more importantly, who they can reach and who they can draw in?

He points out that among current Cup level drivers, only he and the Dillon brothers, Austin and Ty, were born in North Carolina. The arrival of Gordon, a Californian, in 1992 nationalized the sport and now the driver backgrounds reflect that. In fact, California will be the most represented state in Sunday’s Daytona 500. While NASCAR has found racial diversity among drivers elusive, on this it’s been achieved.